


Cybird's Origin - The Switch

by FriendlyCybird



Series: Los Santos Vagabonds [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:00:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7888771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendlyCybird/pseuds/FriendlyCybird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A first-person journey from a desperate new arrival to Los Santos to a Devotee of none other than The Vagabond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cybird's Origin - The Switch

In Los Santos the exploits of the Fake AH Crew seem inescapable. If the city is all you know it’s easy to think their infamy is worldwide. It turns out in a college town and its surrounding “cities” less than 700 miles north of Los Santos, they’re barely more than a name. Unless you’re studying crime in some capacity, you’d think they were an urban legend or a local expression for “Violent Gangsters”. So when I dropped out of college and my friend Faye offered me her couch in Los Santos, they were the farthest thing from my mind. I was more worried about the danger of hitchhiking 700 miles, and where I’d find outlets to charge my phone. 

I saw them in action before I’d ever heard the name FAHC. A traffic jam coming into the city apparently caused by a polite blockade. The distant explosions were spectacular. Eventually a police helicopter was gunned down almost directly over our heads. The force of the explosion when it crashed closeby rocked the car I was sitting in. I turned without thinking and watched another helicopter escape overhead. The rush of sudden excitement left me laughing uncontrollably. I wanted to stop laughing. People had DIED, violently, practically right next to me. I felt like I should be having a more respectful reaction, but I couldn’t stop laughing. I texted Faye in alarm. Good, compassionate, loving Faye who’d talked me off the figurative ledge more than once. I struggled for breath as traffic started moving again. Explaining everything that had happened. “I can’t stop laughing.” I told her. 

“That’s hilarious.” she replied. - Wait, what? 

Faye and I watched the news together that night, and she told all about the best known criminals in Los Santos. Everything I thought I knew about the world twisted as she talked. Eventually I gasped “You ADMIRE them!” 

She looked at me seriously. “It’s a choice between that or living in fear.” She answered. “I like understanding things that scare me and...they really are quite admirable when you understand them.” 

“They’re murderers!” I knew exactly how I sounded. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself I was being a voice of rationality and kindness I could hear myself starting to sound sharp and scolding over a code of ethics that, for some reason, no longer applied. Defeated, I asked “Why does anyone do that? How...how does someone do all that stuff?” 

Faye shrugged. “I can’t imagine it. Just, I suppose one day they just. Flip a switch. In their heads, right? And… they’re just like that now. They decide “this is me. Damn the consequences.” ...I can see it happening to you, actually.” 

“Me?! You’re the one who admires them!” 

“Like I said. It’s that or live in fear.” Then she broke into a wide grin. “Besides, their explosives guy is HOT.” 

I laughed again, and spent the next three days thinking that had been a pun. It wasn’t. She showed me old news footage and they were all as attractive as they are violent. That is, alarmingly so. I quickly became obsessed, watching and recording every news broadcast. Editing, enhancing what video I could. I talked to Faye about their patterns and memorized as much as my brain would hold. It was fun. I pushed away my squeamishness and a good bit of my empathy. Casualty reports stopped being about the victims as instead I used whatever information was available to the public to try to piece together the answer to the all-consuming question. Why? 

It was a series of impossible puzzles that came in such quick succession I never had time to get frustrated that I couldn’t solve them. I never came near any real answers. I got distracted. Faye really only cared about Mogar and the Golden Boy, but nothing held my fascination like The Vagabond. 

The Vagabond was a mystery among mysteries. Somehow, my life in Los Santos had become about unraveling these mysteries. I couldn’t have told you why. I thought it was something I shared with Faye. Then she got a job. 

Faye is a brilliant actress, so I wasn’t surprised when one of her many auditions paid off and she was cast in a TV Pilot. Then she asked a question I wasn’t prepared for. “How’s your job search going?” I wasn’t prepared because I wasn’t on one. I told her as much. We didn’t argue. Yet...I could tell she was disappointed.

I started looking for work. Halfheartedly. Passively e-mailing resumes. The two or three interviews I got died when I mentioned that I don’t drive. OR maybe it was that my only hobby was “following local news.” 

Either way, three months later when Faye’s pilot was picked up for network, she was promoted to a lead in the ensemble, and production was moving to Canada, I was as much terrified as proud of and happy for her. In the weeks before she left, I stepped up my job search to frantic. Then she was gone. 

I was alone in our apartment. I thought about moving into her bedroom. I didn’t. I thought about doing applications, or looking for a new roommate. I didn’t. Instead, I started going through the Vagabonds crime reports. The familiar brutality was comforting. Chaos and fire and death and… time conflicts? 

A robbery on one end of the city and a fire on the other ten minutes apart.  
A mass shooting by the airport, but a brutal beating downtown.   
All blamed on the Vagabond.   
No traffic incidents in between that indicated he was speeding around creating multiple incidents. Not even air traffic. 

It was one of the few reporters I trusted most to provide accurate coverage of FAHC activity who first used the word that made sense of it, if only in passing.

Copycats.

The next day I got an Overdue Rent notice and the pieces fell into place.

700 miles North of Los Santos, standing in traffic is an effective, if risky, way to get a ride. I almost died the first time I tried it here. Desperation doesn’t sell in this city. One of the many reasons The Vagabond wears a mask. Fear is a much better way to ensure cooperation. Basic intimidation. Something in the human mind rejects the faceless, and in that rejection, freezes. Even freezes their several hundred pound metal monstrosities where they’d have the right of way. 

I don’t drive, or even know anything about cars. I assume it was a nice one. Not a very populated highway. The sun was barley up. It was just like when I hitchhiked down here. Except this time I’d become unrecognizable. 

At the time it was just a few layers of one of Faye’s old dark stockings, chopped up and repurposed. It served nicely. The driver stopped, he stayed stopped, he looked afraid when I opened his door and grabbed his lapels. He tipped easily headfirst onto the asphalt. I stole his seat and shut his door behind me. 

I didn’t know how to drive. I drove away anyway. It wasn’t smooth. 

It turns out selling stolen vehicles has a longer turnaround time then I thought if you don’t want the shop you’re trying to sell at surrounded by cops. It was embarrassing, frustrating, sloppy and I was lucky the auto dealer pulled a shotgun on me. 

I thought I was going to die at first.  
I realized Faye would cry.  
I wondered if she’d be horrified or amused by my cause of death.  
Then I decided to amuse her. 

I stepped in fast, walking right up to the auto dealer. Into his personal space so the barrel was alongside my head. Then I grabbed it. I twisted and pulled. The shotgun was in my hands now. I’d never actually fired any kind of gun before. The recoil put me on my ass. The auto dealer wasn’t left with much of a face.

Pure, dumb luck.

There wasn’t as much cash in the store as I expected. I realized later that’s probably because they did most transactions with credit cards. There was enough to cover my rent though. I was being shot at. 

Four cars in neutral pushed out of the building with long strips of burning strips of their gas tanks later and I walked out in the ensuing chaos and felt untouchable. 

Took a bus to a chain store and bought a money order to pay my rent, makeshift mask balled up in my pocket and the first gun I’d ever fired in my bag. That night I spent hours in front of the mirror. Brainstorming. Pens. Paint. I was finally pulled away by the news report of my crime. It wasn’t blamed on the Vagabond outright, but several key phrases I’d once assumed were and treated as code for him (sudden chaos and masked figure, among others) were used. 

I was left once more laughing hysterically, and questioning my entire life.


End file.
